Potted film reviews by Gary Anthony Cross

December 19, 2016December 19, 2016

The X-Files: Fight The Future (1998)

A young boy in Texas is infected by a mysterious contagion and when it seems as if an entire office building is destroyed by a phoney terrorist attack just to cover it up, Mulder and Scully investigate.

I was a big fan of The X-Files in the beginning but it became increasingly obvious that the alien conspiracy story line was just being made up as they went, leading to one unsatisfying plot development after another that never contained any real answers. At the time, everyone hoped that Fight The Future would finally explain all but when this turned out to be yet another load of half answered questions it meant exasperation and disillusionment all round. Watching it in retrospect, I found it a lot easier to be objective and I must admit that knowing what happens afterwards, the film actually makes a lot more sense. It opens very strongly with some nice banter from the extremely likeable leads and attractive visuals with good use of the cinematic media giving it the epic sweep it needed to make the translation to the big screen. Unfortunately the plot follows the typical alien conspiracy formula with the usual mysterious source coming to Mulder in a back alleys and Scully getting kidnapped and experimented on yet again, but it does have some decent set pieces and has stood the test of time quite well on the whole. But because of the overly familiar plot devices it does just feel like a two-parter and as such will be completely incomprehensible to the casual viewer.

Recommended for fans, but others shouldn’t really bother to try wrap their heads around it.